A multi-millennial landscape surrounds Montenerodomo, a shrine of civil, agricultural and archaeological history, for a slow, contemplative tourism. Farmed fields, woods, grazing lands, tratturi, megalithic walls, smooth slopes counterpose to rocky reliefs, ancient roman temples, Christian abbeys and water springs to tell stories of warriors, shepherds and farmers belonging to the Sanniti lineage and defined by the historian Tito Livio as: “agrestes et montani” (that is to say, belonging to the fields and to the mountains).
The territory of Monenerodomo is an open-air museum of bucolic culture laying between the Sangro and Aventino rivers, embraced by the slopes of Maiella and the Chain of Pizzi, defined as the “green heart” of Maiella National Park. A magnificent landscape, which takes different evocative shapes, which moves for the signs left behind by humans, which proofs the millennial efforts and above all the firm bond to the silence and to the secret religiousness of these places with the highest and most arduous mountains of the Appenine and woods, as majestic as Maiella is.
Carricini people and Romans have left their marks here, as well as the noble families Croce and De Thomasis who have more recently introduced new plantations from America (corn, potatoes, tomatoes, pumpkins, sunflowers, etc.) in addition to increasing herds and cattle, contributing to transforming and shaping the landscape as we can see it in any season.
Not far from Montenerodomo, Iuvanum hosts the Museum of the Archaeological Site, with its ancient legacy of daily life of warriors in II century after Christ imperial era, and the story of the landscape from the rural and pastoral scenario to the country colonization with “pagliare”, farmhouses, large farms and agritourism facilities built to make the job of farmers easier by more and healthier food products. With its historic visual language, the Museum evokes the extraordinary beauty of the landscape surrounding the territory of Montenerodomo.
[Credits | Text: Ottavio Di Renzo De Laurentis | Translation: Mirella Rapa | Voice and music: Studio Qreate | Photo: Laura Di Biase]
